


Sand and Ink

by Eve103221 (Indigomagic)



Category: The Paper Gods Series - Amanda Sun, クジラの子らは砂上に歌う | Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau | Children of the Whales (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Ink x Children of the Whales AU, first au, i don’t know what i’m doing, plot what plot?, probably OOC.....very OOC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25000243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indigomagic/pseuds/Eve103221
Summary: I’ll never forget how you saved me from my darkness and loneliness. I’ll never forget it felt like to have a family, even if it was as fleeting as my friends’ lives.
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VanTotoro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanTotoro/gifts), [DR45](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DR45/gifts).



> This fandom now consists of two people and a shoelace. :)  
> Continuation of Amidst the Sand by DR45  
> I had this waiting in my documents for about a year, but I wanted another character and didn’t know who to use.

_There is no escape. There is only death._

You will disappear without even becoming dust on the sand. 

I’d heard that so many times, haunting my dreams. I was drowning in a sea of my own power. 

_I’d been told to disappear, that I was insignificant.....right before I showed them all what I really was. And I wished I’d never done it. I’d been waiting to die, ready to give up, when I lost the only family I’d ever had, and then everything changed._ I _changed._

I’d started seeing someone new in my dreams. Not another Kami. It was someone else. 

At first, I could only remember flashes. Long, dark hair tossed by the wind. A strange sound, like a rougher version of a violin. A symbol shimmering in the air, like a snake poised to strike. 

And I knew this was someone like me. Someone struggling, drowning, lost. 

_I knew. I knew they could help me. If only I could reach through time, past the sea of sand, and find this person. Not a daimonas, but still cursed. Doomed._

_You are the only one who can save me._

But I have to know first. 

_Who are you?_

My name is.....

_Ouni._

Tomohiro. 


	2. Chapter 2

_At first, I figured I was going crazy. I’d been locked up in here for.....days? Weeks? I didn’t even know anymore. I remembered the day I tried to escape. I remembered thinking,_ I’m seventeen now. _But I had no idea how much time had passed since then._

 _I hadn’t tried to escape again. I just sat there in the middle of the room in a collapsed canoe, wondering what this barrier was. It worked, whatever it happened to be. My thymia had just_ stopped. _I could throw snakes around in this little space until Karcharias sank into the sand, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere._

I’d finally found a barrier that worked. It was so simple—if I didn’t finish the drawing, it wouldn’t come off the page. It would move; there was no way to stop that, but it would at least stay on the paper. 

So I tried to draw Ouni. If I could get him off the page.....

No, I was not going to do that. I’d never drawn a person before. Besides, I had no idea who Ouni was. And those snakes .....they were definitely some kind of power. Until I knew what they did, I wasn’t going to pull Ouni off the page. It was too dangerous. I couldn’t even draw a harmless animal without something bad happening. 

I spent about an hour trying out different sketches, making sure to leave something missing in each of them. A line connecting his clothes to the ground, or his ear to his neck......anything. I considered trying to draw that snake symbol, but then decided that I didn’t really know what to leave out in that. And there was no way I was pulling it off the page. If a simple firefly became dangerous under my pen, I didn’t want to know what would happen to someone else’s powers. 

“Hey, Yuu—” 

“Sato!” I ripped the pages out, folded them up, and scrawled Ouni’s name on them in phonetic Katakana. Then I turned to face Sato, hiding the drawings behind me. 

“I thought you didn’t draw anymore.” 

“I don’t. It’s a project for my cram school,” I lied. 

“I thought you never drew people.” 

_Argh, Sato! Leave me alone!_

“I _don’t._ These aren’t that good, anyway.” 

“Who’s Ouni?” 

“No one,” I said. I pulled the first sketch out of the stack, the one with Ouni’s name on it, tore it up, and threw it out. 

Sato shrugged and left me alone. 

“Someone who might be able to save me,” I whispered. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part of the Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau manga is currently ????? to me, so I’m kind of relying on Tomo right now.

_Copper hair. Drawings coming off the page._

Starved. Markings coiling, poised to strike. 

I’d seen Ouni again last night, this time clearer, as if my drawings had strengthened our connection. This morning, I added those markings, unable to really capture the image in my mind. The markings looked like tattoos the way I drew them, mostly because I was only creating pen sketches. 

_I looked like a living corpse. I tried to sleep as much as possible, like that would stave off the hunger._

I woke up with a new sketch in front of me. Or really, three. On the front of the page was a pair of girls who looked no older than twelve or thirteen. They looked like twins. One had dark hair and wore a black dress. The other looked like her opposite, clad in lighter shades. 

Next to the twins was a young man in what honestly looked like a dress to me, his hands clasped together in front of him. 

The third sketch was Ouni again, this time chained to a cocoon-like boat, which was suspended from the dome ceiling of an otherwise-empty room. 

Kami _. The word was unfamiliar to me. I knew it meant both paper and God, but that was the extent of my knowledge. This Tomohiro was one, but I had no idea what that meant._

Words from a nightmare came back to me: _Draw Hanchi. Dead._

I’d never killed someone on paper. I never would, if given the choice. 

But maybe I could save someone on paper. 


	4. Chapter 4

_Knowing where my limits were really didn’t give me anything useful. I could create a disaster within these walls. I could tear the downed canoe to pieces. I could disconnect myself from it with barely a thought._ _I could not get out._

_I leaned over the side of the canoe, straining against the chains. Intricate markings were etched on it, but they didn’t look like anything important._

 _Except for the neat kanji scrawled upside down on the side where I could read them:_ I think I can get you out. 

_I think I can get you out._ Would he understand that? If he could see it, then we were connected through my drawing. All I had to do was draw a line through those chains and Ouni would be free. 

I raised the pen and scratched through the ink, cleaving the set of metal bolts in half. Then I crossed out the three rings wrapped around each of Ouni’s arms. Ink flowed down the drawing; I’d cut him, too. 

I hissed a curse in Japanese. _Baka_ ink. 

_Blood dripped from the two long cuts running down the sides of my arms. The chains clattered to the floor, the noise deafening in the silent room. A cut ran down my spine, too, but I was free._

_The containment barrier was thymia-proof. It was not person-proof, so I could walk right through it._

“Sayonara, suckers,” I wrote. 

I’d done it. 

Maybe I really could do something other than hurting people. 


End file.
